Choosing the perfect wedding bouquet can be an enormous task; color, texture, shape, and seasonality all come into play. Not to mention, many brides want to select flowers with special meaning or fasten their bouquet with a cloth or brooch that holds sentimental value.

The royal family is no different. From Queen Victoria in 1840 to Kate Middleton in 2011, there's one bouquet tradition that every royal bride has taken part in — a sprig of myrtle must appear in her bundle of flowers.

Myrtle is often considered the flower of love, marriage, and lasting fertility, so its appearance in a wedding bouquet is hardly unusual. But for royals, the evergreen woody shrub is sourced from a special place: Queen Victoria's own 170-year-old garden. Victoria's myrtle plant was given to her in the 1800s by the grandmother of her husband, Prince Albert.

Along with the meaningful sprig of myrtle, Kate Middleton's bouquet included hyacinths, which represent constancy; lily of the valley, which represents a return to happiness; and Sweet William, a tribute to her new beau.